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If the ride had lasted much longer, I might have jumped out and run for the airport or the bus station or…or something. Not only were they ignoring me, which was hard enough, but I’d begun to wonder if whatever language they spoke might not be the official language of the school. We’d flown all night and into the day, but I had never learned how fast jets flew. Did they all fly at the same speed?
Was Lodradian, the name Dexter had used for this place, in the United States? Europe? Asia? Surely we couldn’t have gone as far as that.
Before I could worry much more, the fields with their crops and cows, sheep, and horses gave way to hedges at least fifteen feet tall. They were green—mostly. Streaks of those same colors, magenta, coral, even purple, that I’d seen in the grasses when we landed peeked through. I’d seen pampas grasses in a seed catalogue once, and they were the closest thing to the ones at the airport, but their colors were more subtle. I thought they must get a lot of rain here to have such verdant growth of trees and hedges and grasses and the crops we’d passed. I didn’t grow up on a farm, but there were lots of them outside of town, and their fields were not nearly as far along.
Just as I began to think the hedges would go on forever, the driver slowed the car, and I rolled down the heavily tinted window for a better view of the tall double gate even now opening inward to admit us to my new “school.”
I fell back in the seat with a gasp. Not only was the hedge not green without the window tinting, the gate was so bright, it nearly blinded me. As if the metal was covered with glitter or something? And the hedge…not green but varying shades from maroon through indigo, and some colors I couldn’t even name.
There must be some really great gardeners in this area.
Mom loved playing in the soil, and she had piles of actual paper catalogues by her chair every winter. I’d flipped through them a few times and seen some pretty spectacular images of “new and improved” flowers and vegetables, but when I pointed them out to her, she waved them away and said if it wasn’t at least a couple of hundred years old, the varieties weren’t interesting to her.
As the gates parted, opening inward, and the driver steered between them, I wondered if what was before me was typical of two-hundred-year-old species. Mom’s little suburban plot was beautiful and bountiful, the envy of the neighbors, but this… We drove for at least ten minutes, maybe longer, along the broad drive flanked by trees whose branches arched overhead, each one in full bloom. And…each one’s blossoms different colors. Were there even that many colors in the rainbow?
I reached for my phone, to take pics and send to Mom, but with a twittery burst of excitement, my fellow passengers, who I’d basically forgotten existed once I rolled the window down, began to gather their belongings. Up ahead stood our school. At least, I assumed I viewed our school. If I’d seen it in a picture, I’d have thought it was an English country manor, but the grout between the bricks held the same sparkle as the gates.
A large manor, to be certain, wings spreading out on either side of a central building that rose at least four stories. How could my parents have attended this university or, as the sign over the door proclaimed it, The Sciathain Academy, and never mentioned it. Had they come back for reunions?
No, of course not. They only ever traveled for Dad’s occasional business trip…unless…unless they hadn’t wanted to tell me they were coming here? Silly. There would be no reason to keep their college a secret. I knew I’d want my children to hear all about my college experiences, to bring them to my old campus to walk the grounds and see where I’d attended classes and gone to football games and… Probably football meant soccer here. I wasn’t sure where we were but was rapidly coming to the conclusion it was not anywhere in the good old USA.
The car came to a stop, and I held back while the others climbed out and mounted the stairs to the wide double doors of the central building. Up close, it was so overwhelming. Sure, I’d ogled the ivy-covered walls of some of the most prestigious American institutions—via their websites and brochures—none of them held the ancient dignity of this place.
A fact confirmed by a Roman numeral embedded in the slate doorstep. Digging deep into my memory, I translated it to…1063? It couldn’t be. Maybe that wasn’t referring to the age of the building. It was the date of the Norman Invasion, right? No, that was 1066. So, perhaps it was just a significant date for some reason. Did this mean we were in England?
Or maybe it wasn’t a date at all but a number of graduates in the first class?
The number of burgers served?
Now jetlag was just taking me down the rabbit hole. The other girls had already disappeared inside, still not acknowledging me in a way I’d have thought was only possible in dreams, nightmares. I wanted to run after them and grab a shoulder, an arm, demand they admit they could see me. But the sense of self-preservation that got me through high school helped me not to do that. They were clearly not going to be my new friends. And that was okay. Not everyone would be my friends.
Just please let someone be my friend.
I’d come too far to die of loneliness.
And with that drama-bama-queen thought, I walked from bright sunshine into the dimness of an entry hall that soared all the way to the roofline. And into a butler.
I knew he was a butler because I’d seen a lot of movies where a tall man in a dark suit answered the manor door.
Chapter Five
“Lady Glimmer, what a nice surprise. I’d heard rumors, but—” The butler was cut off by a tall woman who cleared her throat. Her closed his eyes briefly and stepped back with a dip of his head toward me. “Of course, please enter.”
I stepped forward but didn’t feel the floor beneath me. I was floating on air and hope and sheer awe of this place.
Couldn’t believe I got to go to school here.
“Endymion, please come in. Everyone else has already been seated.” The tall woman whose chin stuck out a little too far, making her look like she was proud and pompous, waved her hand toward royal-blue-velvet antique sofas that made a horseshoe in the middle of the room. Dark wood, walnut or pecan, if I had to guess, lined every inch of the room, floor, walls, ceiling. Yes, even the ceiling was covered in the rich, satiny wood.
How many forests had given their lives for this room?
The other girls were already seated. One of them with blonde ringlets was tapping her designer shoe on the floor, a clear sign of her impatience with me or maybe with this place.
“Welcome to Sciathain Academy. I am Headmistress Titania.” She swished her teal skirt to the left when she said her name. It made her look like a princess, though her title was far from it. “We are elated that your families have trusted your education to us. We guarantee you a magical experience.”
A round of laughter broke out amongst the girls, and even the butler put his hand over his mouth to silence his chuckle.
It wasn’t that funny. Corny, yes. Funny, no.
